Monetization overview

Memberfy charges inside the community: members choose, pay by PIX, boleto or card without leaving your address, and access turns on and off by itself as payments come in. The money lands in the community's balance and leaves through a payout to your bank account. This article is the map: what each piece is, how they fit together, and where to start.

#Where it lives

Everything is under Administration › Monetization, in eight sections in a menu on the left (on narrow screens, or with the app menu open, the sections become the Choose a section button, which opens the list in a drawer), in this order:

Who subscribes to what lives in Members › Subscriptions, with the community's other people. See Subscription management.

Who can open Monetization: owner, admin and finance. The first two create and edit; finance only views, with one exception: all three refund buyers. See Roles and permissions.

#The pieces

Plus two pricing rules for monthly and annual billing options:

• Contract length: a minimum term (3, 6 or 12 months) billed month by month.
• Annual in installments: the whole year in one purchase, in up to 12 card installments.

#How the pieces connect

In the API, a plan is a subscription group, and a billing option is a product of type SUBSCRIPTION. On screen, the names are the ones in the table above.

#The order to create them in

Each piece uses the one before it, so order matters:

1. Payout setup: submit the Business Information and the bank account for review. While it runs, steps 2 to 5 can be done as drafts; publishing and selling wait for approval. See Business information.
2. Billing options, one per way to pay (Monthly, Annual).
3. The plan, ticking the options from step 2.
4. The add-ons, as monthly options outside any plan, ticked in the plan's Add-ons (upsell) section.
5. The downsell for each add-on, in the plan itself.
6. Access: spaces with Subscribers visibility, or Private unlocked for the plan.
7. Coupons, whenever you want.

See also Creation order, which shows the same sequence in the API.

While the community can't sell yet, a notice at the top of Monetization says where the review stands (not submitted, under review with the expected answer date, rejected with the reason, or sales suspended after editing approved information) and takes you to the Business Information through the Open Business Information button. See The notice in Monetization.

#Which one to use

#A complete example, with numbers

A SaaS community that sells plans by the number of members:

Add-ons: Coworking Extension (US$ 79 a month) and Planning & HR Extension (US$ 189 a month) on every plan; +2,000 members pack (US$ 19 a month) on Scale only.

Someone subscribes to Growth Monthly with the Coworking Extension: they pay US$ 25 + US$ 79 = US$ 104, in a single payment. The platform fee is 6.99% of US$ 104 (US$ 7.27) plus US$ 1.00 once per order: US$ 8.27. The community keeps US$ 95.73.

#Revenue for the period

In the Dashboard section, between the balance and the latest transactions, the Revenue card shows how much the community sold: "Sales in the period, by payment date. Amounts before the platform fee." At the top of the card, pick the period: Last 7 days, Last 30 days (the default), Last 90 days or Last 12 months.

How the numbers are worked out:

• They come from the community's statement, by payment date. A boleto issued on 10/28 and paid on 11/02 counts in November. Gross uses the same source as the Gross revenue indicator on the Dashboard and the reports, so the numbers match.
• A refund doesn't leave Gross. The sale still counts on the day it was paid; the refund shows up separately, in the period it was made, and comes out of Net of refunds. A refund made in parts counts once.
• A zero-value sale doesn't count: complimentary access, an add-on included in the plan and free products are left out of the amount and the number of sales.
• A deleted purchase is left out of all four blocks.
• Before the platform fee. The net here is net of refunds, not what reaches the balance: each sale's fee shows in the statement.
• One currency at a time. When the community sells in more than one currency, a picker with the codes (BRL, USD…) appears under the period, starting with the currency with the most sales. With a single currency, there is no picker. Amounts follow the format of the community's currency, in any app language.

Example. Over 30 days, the community sold 9 subscriptions and products for US$ 1,299.40 and refunded one monthly fee of US$ 99.90, with no chargebacks. The card shows Gross US$ 1,299.40 (9 sales), Refunds US$ 99.90 (1 refund), Chargebacks US$ 0.00 (No chargebacks) and Net of refunds US$ 1,199.50.

Who sees the card: owner, admin and finance, the same people who open Monetization. The page's Refresh button reloads the card too.

In the API, the same numbers come from GET /api/dashboard/monetization: metrics.totalRevenue carries amount, count, refunds, chargebacks and net; currency is the currency of the answer, currencies lists the currencies the community has sold in, and the currency parameter picks one. Sending currency more than once returns 400, with the validation error.

Through the assistant, get_sales_summary answers with the same blocks and takes one currency (currency). Ask, for example: "How much did I sell in the last 30 days, how much did I refund and what's left?" or "And in reais?".

#What selling costs

The platform fee is 6.99% + US$ 1.00 per charge, the same for PIX, boleto and card, and it applies to every sale and every renewal. Each payout costs 0.25% + US$ 0.25 (coming to communities). On each product, you choose who pays the fee: the community or the buyer. See Platform fee.

#What happens after a sale

1. The payment is confirmed (instantly for card and PIX; when it clears, for boleto).
2. Access to the plan's or product's spaces is unlocked.
3. The buyer gets the confirmation email, and the community gets the sale notice.
4. The sale goes into the statement as pending and, on its release date, becomes available for payout. See Balance and statement.

See Checkout, Balance and statement and Payouts.

#Checklist before you promote it

• Payout setup approved: Business Information and bank account with Approved status under Monetization › Payments.
• Billing options set to Active, with at least one payment method ticked.
• Plan with its options ticked, and a description and benefits filled in.
• Spaces that only payers should see set to Subscribers, or Private unlocked for the plan.
• Test the /pricing page with a member account: the plan shows up, the prices match, the total is right.
• Who pays the fees checked on each option: the screen's default is Buyer.
• A test coupon, if you're going to use coupons, validated at checkout.

#Common errors and how to fix them

#Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account with a payment gateway? No. Payment processing is Memberfy's: you register your details and a bank account, and that's it.

Can I charge in dollars? Each plan has one currency, and all its options use it. The default is the Brazilian real.

Can a community have a free part and a paid part? Yes, that's the most common setup: Members spaces open to everyone, and Subscribers or Private spaces for those who pay.

Can finance create a coupon? No. Finance sees coupons and how they're used; creating and editing belongs to the owner and admins.

Can I change a plan's price later? The new price applies to people who subscribe afterward; existing subscribers keep the price they signed up at. To avoid surprising anyone, create a new option and deactivate the old one.

Can one person have two plans? They can subscribe to more than one plan, each billed separately. For an extra on top of a plan, the right way is an add-on, billed together.

Where do members pay? On the community's pricing page, /pricing. Each plan also has a direct link, /pricing/<plan>.

#Related

• Plans
• Billing options
• Checkout
• Platform fee